What is Enceladus?
Enceladus is the sixth-largest moon of Saturn. It is distinctive for its albedo of 100%, meaning it reflects almost all incoming light and is nearly white in appearance, with blue “tiger stripe” formations. Some of the most fantastic space photography focuses on Enceladus among Saturn’s rings. Enceladus is named after the Titan of the same name from Greek mythology. Enceladus is small: 504 km in diameter. It is small enough that it varies in its sphericity by a factor of a few percent; it is a flattened elipsoid. Until the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft made fly-bys of Saturn, very little was known about Enceladus as it merely showed up as a dot on the most powerful telescopes. When they did fly by and take pictures and measurements, scientists gained a great deal of information about Enceladus as well as the other Saturnian moons. The most notable aspect was that some of Enceladus’ plains had barely any craters. Enceladus has a moon with surface geography of widely varying age, so
